Lamonsters on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane is Ned Lamont. But hold that thought for a moment.

It used to be that being a serious film fan required considerable effort, in terms of accessing both the films and the gossip, news, and analysis that we now take for granted. The DVD and home video revolutions have solved access issues when it comes to movies themselves, but just as important is that the internet has solved access issues with regards to insider gossip and industry buzz that was previously confined to those in and around the business. Those who tended to be film nerds were of a more intellectual bent, spending their days in art houses watching foreign films and reading such dense fare as Film Comment.

With the mid 90s advent of home-brewed gossip sites like Ain’t It Cool News, the rabid, manic movie mania of indie video store geeks and midnight movie weirdos finally had a virtual community. And what they brought with them was a boisterous, often-vulgar, untrained-but-knowledgable enthusiasm for all types of movies—but especially some types of movies that the mainstream moviegoing public would consider extreme. It wasn’t a populist revolution—it was an enthusiast revolution.

Slightly more recently, the same thing happened between the web and politics. Sites like DailyKos spread a political knowledge once limited mainly to insiders and those close to them, creating a huge base of, once again, boisterous, often-vulgar, untrained-but-knowledgable enthusiasts.

And both camps, feeling strength from numbers, started to demand things. On the movie side, they started to demand that movie studios stop making watered down genre films, to go for the gore and stay true to original characters. On the political side, they bitched and whined about watered down legislation, to go for the spending and stay true to progressive ideals. The movie fans complained when studios would attach hack directors to interesting projects instead of their quirkier, purer fan favorites. The Kossacks complained when middle of the road Democrats were nominated or elected to important positions instead of the Kossacks' less mainstream, purer favorites. Both groups argued that if the mainstream was ever really exposed to their allegedly radical ideas, it would respond energetically to their less watered down vision of what movies and politics ought to be, and used sometimes dubious historical examples to back themselves up. The movie fans railed against the drab, unimaginitive focus on “profitability;” the bloggers railed against a similar focus on “electability.”

And while both were often disparaged in the mainstream press for their vulgarity, their contentiousness, their untrained passions, both groups eventually gained some notice, if not much success at the polls or the multiplex. But now, in the last few weeks, we’ve seen a convergence, with both groups getting an important, notable success that suggests the power they have. Ned Lamont, favored son of true-blooded progressives everywhere, beat out the long time Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, and Snakes on a Plane with Sam Jackson was reshot, recut, and reimagined—even renamed—based on an outpouring from the Ain’t It Cool crowd, building a huge momentum based on the ravings of post-drive-in movie fangeeks.

Ain’t it Cool News is Daily Kos. Ain’t it Cool talkbackers are Kossack bloggers. Harry Knowles is Markos Moulitsas. And Snakes on a Plane is Ned Lamont.

Addendum: Let me clarify a bit. My point isn't to compare the political positions of Lamont and Lieberman or argue that one is better than the other (I don't think that works very well as an analogy with SoAP). Instead, I'm suggesting that they're the same because their personas and their popularity have both been fueled by very similar net-enthusiast communities.

I'm a conservative, so I have political differences with both Lieberman and Lamont, but this wasn't intended as a slam against either candidate--just a recognition of the strange concurrence of Ned Lamont's blogosphere-powered success and Snakes on a Plane's netgeek-powered rise to nearly mainstream, insta-cult status.